Suit Filed Over Penalty Cutoff of Welfare Aid

Poverty law firms filed suit Monday to halt Los Angeles County’s practice of cutting off welfare benefits for 60 days to recipients who fail to document their search for jobs or who disobey minor rules of the General Relief program.

The Los Angeles County Superior Court civil suit claims the penalty throws 5,000 recipients onto the street every month in violation of their state constitutional right to shelter and federal constitutional right to due process of law. By cutting off the benefits for any purported infraction, the suit claims, county officials breach their duty to provide for the subsistence needs of the homeless poor.

Deputy County Counsel Amanda Susskind, who represents the Department of Public Social Services and Board of Supervisors in welfare cases, said she had not yet seen the suit and could not comment on it.

The litigation, scheduled for a court hearing March 12, followed by four days a hearing on the controversial 60-day cutoff of benefits that prompted Board of Supervisors Chairman Ed Edelman to call the county’s welfare program for the homeless “a gigantic mess.”

Under the county’s $90-million General Relief welfare program, designed as a safety net to aid those who cannot qualify for other public assistance, “employable” recipients must work at minimum wages for their monthly $228 grants. They also must have 20 job interviews a month and present verification of those interviews. Failing to fulfill the requirements results in loss of benefits for 60 days.

“The penalty is imposed indiscriminately for all infractions of regulations deemed by DPSS to be in some way related to the employability of the applicant or recipient,” attorney Michael Bodaken stated in the suit. “It falls with equal force on those who turn in paper work a few minutes late and on those who willfully refuse to work at county ‘workfare’ projects.”

Sources of Suit

Joining in preparing the suit, one in a series to aid the homeless, were the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, the San Fernando Valley Neighborhood Legal Services Inc., the Inner City Law Center, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Western Center on Law and Poverty Inc.

The suit was filed in the names of Sister Mary Rice, founder of a shelter for women called Homing, and Walter Bannister, an indigent who lost his benefits (later reinstated) because he had not documented his search for work at a specified time.

Among the 63 indigents who described their plight in written statements to the court was Ronald Hanzy, a former gardener who doctors decided was too ill for manual labor. His benefits were cut off for 60 days because he missed a hearing for which he said he was never notified.

“I’m on a 60-day penalty now. I’m sleeping in parks and eating wherever I can,” Hanzy stated. “I’m very, very cold . . . and I’m starving to death. Every night, I worry if I’m going to wake up the next morning.”